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Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

How exactly do you type mu? On a chalkboard writing the mu sign is trivial, on a computer... well I don't have a mu button.

Edit:

There are like 5 replies to this mentioning different ways of doing it (including memorizing 3 digit unicode values) none of which seem more intuitive than writing "mu".

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I just do \mu (or ;mu) in Emacs.

We're in the 21st century, all the tools we use should have reasonable Unicode support. The fact that we collectively keep on talking about typing non-ASCII characters as a real problem is a pretty depressing reflection of our shared computer infrastructure :(.

For me: alt+enter (switches to Greek keyboard layout), m, alt+enter (back to usual layout). I use Greek symbols in Python and in Javascript. I do it almost without thinking now, as lots of my coding is tightly linked to maths.

you can map a useless key like capslock to do that in a single step. Thus to type μ, for example, you simply press CAPS+m, and similarly for all greek letters

What is a capslock key, I only have ctrl and hyper ;)

You probably have what is called a GUI key, hyper died out with the space cadet keyboard. Caps lock is above the left shift.

man, it's the only key that has an assigned light in my keyboard! Funnily, the capslock light in my laptop seems to be detached to the configuration of that key, so that the light shows the parity of the total number of greek characters that I have typed.

> none of which seem more intuitive than writing "mu"

Write for the convenience of the reader, not of the writer!

I use on Linux the XCompose key (which is assigned the menu key right from the space bar, or the "Print Screen" key), and then "\mu" like in LaTeX. I don't need to think about it because I have used LaTeX for years. I also use the XCompose to generate € and ß which are special symbols in my native language. This has the advantage that I can use the UK International layout for everything, which makes specifically writing code much more comfortable. Also, the xcompose keymap is just a text file in my home directory, I can extend it at any time and take it with me. The method is also independent from any application.

Also, Emacs has an input method which supports "\mu", and this convention is also used in Racket for things like λ.

Vim/Neovim makes it very easy to input all kinds of interesting Unicode, using the "digraph" system. A lot of other code editors have similar functionality, either through keystrokes or some kind of "palette" interface. And Julia REPL itself has Tex-like escape sequences.

I agree that we need better system-wide tools for arbitrary Unicode input. Font support and confusable glyphs are also issues. But I think these are solvable problems, and they will be good problems to have solved.

I type <Greek>-m. One extra keypress, just like when I type é, ü, č, ç, π, etc. If you type in more than one language, or math, your keyboard is already set up to handle this.

in Julia:

\mu<tab>

On Windows you can use Autohotkey and map it to "Right Windows Key" + u. Or use "Right Alt Key"+ "Numpad 230" ALT Code, https://usefulshortcuts.com/alt-codes/greek-alt-codes.php)

In the Julia REPL and most Julia editor extensions you can just use \mu <tab> and call it a day. This is a non-issue for Julia users.

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